


No Matter How Improbable

by inthemouthofthewolf



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, I Don't Even Know, I Will Go Down With This Ship, M/M, Robot Sherlock, Robotics, did you two have a bit of a domestic, surprise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-14
Updated: 2012-08-14
Packaged: 2017-11-12 03:34:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inthemouthofthewolf/pseuds/inthemouthofthewolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John notices something weird going on with Sherlock (weirder than usual anyway) and goes to investigate. I'm not going to minimalist this now because that's silly. John notices that Sherlock keeps going to visit his brother, and he doesn't know why, and Sherlock keeps doing it, at random times for almost no reason, automatically, as if it had been programmed. John discovers the real Sherlock Holmes in a coma, the Sherlock he loves is literally a machine, a fancy machine that Mycroft keeps in working order, but Moriarty inadvertently infected Sherlock with robot!HIV somehow, so the machine Sherlock is stuck in a diagnostic loop and keeps going to Mycroft for maintenance even though he's otherwise fine. The real Sherlock probably wakes up at some point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Matter How Improbable

It had been a long day for Dr. John Watson, only otherwise remarkable in its relative mediocrity, besides that he spilled coffee on his favourite sweater. It was a clumsy move on his part; he felt stupid with the dark stain on the light fabric, but he’d feel even more asinine to be carrying around said sweater instead of wearing it when it was this chilly out. To be fair, he’d been looking forward to coming home all day. The impromptu (and rather coerced) meeting at the cafe with his coworkers during his lunch break had been singularly intolerable. John, feeling that he didn’t have much in common at all with his colleagues, couldn’t engage in small-talk to save his life even on the best of days. More irritating still, the weather was so unremarkable save for its usual dreariness that he couldn’t even fall back on that when at a loss of ideas (Shit). And, being that his mind was elsewhere, more specifically, his mind was already at 221B Baker St, he couldn’t quite feel bad about not making for interesting conversation.

When his body finally caught up with his brain, and he got up the stairs to their flat, his mood had lifted considerably, even become cheerful now that he was finished with work. John didn’t hate his job, though-- far from it. Mundane, he had said, was good—it balanced out with the “endless excitement” (putting it kindly) that was living with Sherlock Holmes. He’d left out that last bit in the job interview, of course. Even so, he could honestly admit that he was looking forward to a somewhat quiet evening with his flatmate and friend, and maybe doing a bit of blogging on the side.

He’d barely settled in when Sherlock swept past him and out the door and away without a word.

John was in a sour mood all night.

 

 

“I need to go see Mycroft.”

“Again? What for?” Watson never receives a reply, just a blank stare, as if it should have been painfully obvious why Sherlock was going. The stare (sometimes just a sidelong glance before Sherlock all lanky and lithe got up off of the sofa, stepped onto and over the coffee table, and disappeared out the door) was of the usual piercing magnitude, but always colder somehow, though vacant.

Watson initially couldn’t place such a feeling, and so he would shrug and go back to his reading, or blogging, or watching the telly, but lately it was bothering him, it was growing. Sherlock seemed now to run off to his brother after almost every case and at random times in between—if it had been every case, John would have thought maybe Sherlock was giving some sort of progress report, but it was too sporadic for that, besides the whole arch-enemy thing. John was no idiot, no matter how much Sherlock may attest so, and he knew there was something going on that was deeper than just visiting a brother. Was Sherlock even visiting Mycroft at all? Sometimes, no scratch that, all the time, John wished he had a mind even half as clever as Sherlock Holmes’s, so then his flatmate wouldn’t be so damned impossible to figure out. Why did things have to be so bloody confusing?

The confusion only escalated when John thought he might finally actually at least figure out a few more pieces of the puzzle—the next day when he got home from work, Sherlock had already returned to the flat, and was lazily plucking at his violin. John cleared his throat, getting his collected questions together in his head, trying to keep things as rational as possible, which shouldn’t be a problem.

He later transcribed the short conversation in a private blog entry:

“So er… how was that visit with your brother?”

“What visit?”

“You know, yesterday. You said you needed to go see Mycroft.”

(Sherlock scoffed) “I said no such thing.”

“So where were you?”

“………………………………………………”

“I can see you’re not going to tell me. That’s fine. I’m not upset—see how calm I am? I’m not mad, so just tell me what the hell is going on!”

“…”

“Fine. If you don’t want to tell me what’s going on that’s your own business. I don’t care. I don’t. I don’t give a damn what you do, I don’t worry about you, I don’t--“

Watson stops typing, leaving out the part where what he’s realizing seemed like bitching and whininess and ultimately all-out sobbing and tears reached a peak. The emotions were too heightened, for him anyway, and he raged all around Sherlock, who was calm and still as stone. It ended with a (on one-hand mortified at his behaviour) Watson stalking off to his bedroom to sulk like an adolescent, Sherlock as nonplussed as if the dialogue had never occurred.

John couldn’t sleep that night. He couldn’t fathom what could be keeping Sherlock quiet like that; they were some sort of type of friends, weren’t they? And while Sherlock keeps things from John all the time for a deus ex machina effect, things like this Sherlock doesn’t usually lie about. He supposed he could go ask him again—despite it being almost three in the morning, John knew Sherlock was awake. He’d never actually seen the man sleep, yet. But of course he had to, nobody can get on without sleep. John made all kinds of excuses. Excuses to not go talk to Sherlock again tonight, even pathetic excuses contradictory to fact—that maybe this time Sherlock really was sleeping.

John knows he’s in for a fitful night. He lays awake, thinking, wondering. With all the sibling rivalry between Sherlock and Mycroft that he’s witnessed, it didn’t make any sense for Sherlock to be going over there at seemingly random times. It didn’t make any sense that those visits took precedent over almost anything else going on at the time. None of it made sense. So what was going on?

Then John’s borderline-possessive thoughts took a darker turn. Mycroft must be trying to control Sherlock somehow, through threats, blackmail, something, except it didn’t seem possible to really threaten Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock just wouldn’t take that kind of thing seriously if the danger only applied to his own person. “Why would Sherlock not want to tell me about something? Because it’s embarrassing? What would embarrass Sherlock?”

There was one explanation that kept sticking out in his head, the only one that explained, as Sherlock would insist, all of the facts. Why would Sherlock either not remember or pretend to not remember something that happened? The second one, that kind of lie, seemed so unlike Sherlock that John gravitated towards the first. So if Sherlock really didn’t remember any of these rendezvous with Mycroft, the question is, as John leapt wildly to several shocking conclusions in quick succession, was he being drugged? Was Sherlock being taken advantage of?

The idea of it made John see red. His mind kept stubbornly jumping back to it. With someone as-- damn it-- ethereal and beautiful and shockingly naïve as Sherlock, how could anyone not want to take advantage of him in such a manner? Even John would admit to himself that he’s thought about it. He’s more than thought about it. He’d even go as far to admit that he’s yearned for that kind of connection with Sherlock. That inkling, that hint that maybe he and Sherlock could have something very real and visceral and mutual and caring and just plain brilliant, gave John certainty—he needed to figure out what was happening if it would kill him (so to speak) and, if it was what he thought it was, stop it. Save Sherlock.

Tomorrow John fully intends to take a day off work to start sorting this out. John Watson can be a detective, too, and maybe even a damn good one.


End file.
